Rebel Without a Cause

Beginning NWFFs Required Viewing series of lectures and classes is an opportunity to hear all about the 1955 Rebel Without a Cause from its 88-year-old screenwriter, Seattle resident Stewart Stern. As directed by Nicholas Ray, James Dean plays the now iconic misunderstood teen, caught between his parents and his ardor for Natalie Wood. Youre tearing me apart! he famously howls at his folks. Today the scenelike all the acting hereseems borderline grotesque melodrama; it makes you think more of Jim Carreys old Dean impersonation than of any real emotion. The movies no classic, but its an essential document of its overblown, mom-hating, crackpot-Freud postwar era. Without it, thered be no WB Network, no The O.C., none of our entire teen-based industrial culture. Blink fast and youll miss Deans crony Dennis Hopper, merely credited as Goon. (NR) BRIAN MILLER